Reading Daniel Immerwahr’s latest book, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, feels like an exercise in pulling back a carefully maintained curtain. Immerwahr, a Chicago-based historian and Northwestern University professor, spares no crucial details in his survey of the history of the United States outside the 50 states. Through a sweeping examination of American colonialism past and present, including now-states Alaska and Hawaii, former holdings such as the Philippines, and enduring territories like Puerto Rico, Immerwahr paints a picture of imperialism as an intractable force in American history from the very beginning. “The history of the United States,” he concludes, “is the history of empire.”
There are right now five inhabited territories of the United States: Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. In the last two years, four of them have faced some kind of existential threat: Hurricanes Maria and Irma to Puerto Rico, North Korea’s threatening to surround Guam “in an enveloping fire,” and something we don’t talk about: Typhoon Yutu, which hit Saipan and Tinian in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas and was the largest storm to hit the United States since the 1930s. It’s just another reminder that these places remain on the front lines of history. Sometimes they are harbingers of what’s going to be happening on the U.S. mainland. That’s certainly been the case in times of war, [and] it’s probably going to be the case with climate change. These are the parts of the United States that are going to be hit most quickly and worst by the storms, and they’re also the places, like Guam, that are going to be the most exposed as U.S. military alliances fray. So there’s a lot of reasons to pay attention from the perspective of the mainland.
It’s funny, after the state quarters were issued, representatives from the territories asked that they also get quarters, and they did. And this little thing—I mean, how often do you actually look at the back of a quarter?—has had a galvanizing effect on people I know. They look at quarters and they think, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize the Northern Mariana Islands were part of the United States!”
By Daniel Immerwahr (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Discussion and signing Sat 5/4, 2 PM, Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore, 7419 W. Madison St., Forest Park, 708-771-7243, centuriesandsleuths.com. F
